Possible experiment to test for a "Divine" intelligent designer

He seems to have fixed that with his repost of the introduction:

It’s a lot easier to read there.

1 Like

What a shame, indeed. You appear to be unable to understand the substance of criticisms and therefore unable to respond to them. You have done nothing to improve your proposal, which cannot be improved: it can only be discarded.

You do not appear to grasp the fact that the things people, including myself, have said here are not mere matters of minor quarrel with your statement of the matter. They are substantive objections which leave nothing at all standing. You cannot evade them by rewording your pseudo-philosophical justifications for your thinking.

As for bringing substance to my response: already done, and others have done, also. Your latest revision responds to none of that; accordingly there’s nothing of substance to add. You really need to stop thinking that this proposal of yours can possibly have any merit at all, and start asking yourself how scientists REALLY study biology. Read some papers. Stay away from bad DI-inspired ID philosophizing.

2 Likes

Just shortening the statement of the hypothesis.

No, it doesn’t. The Designer could have chosen this as the means of design, and the biochemist merely replicates it.

By failing to make any claims or limits whatsoever about the Designer, ID has effectively shot itself in the foot with respect to falsification. An unknown and unknowable Designer might do anything at all, at any time, and there is no means to falsify related hypotheses - not even in theory.

AND don’t get me wrong; there are some scientific hypotheses for which falsification isn’t practical. BUT it should be possible - at least in theory - to find evidence to falsify a hypothesis.
With one notable exception (Ewert 2016) ID does not propose falsifiable hypotheses.

3 Likes

Looking at the text in edit mode, there is nothing visible to distinguish to text box. So yes it is markdown of some sort, but it’s invisible markdown too! :ghost: :face_with_monocle:

edit: Oh sure, then some OTHER mods rolls in and fixes it, making me look bad! :wink: :laughing:

Did you read my introduction before you made this response?

After reading your most recent response, I feel like you did not read the introduction before you responded. Please do so if you did not.

I did. I do not understand why you think that you can remedy a non sequitur by appending an incoherent philosophical prologue to it.

2 Likes

Yes indeed, all versions. As I stated before, if this was easy, then someone would have figured it all out already.

That’s a bad analogy to begin with. AFAIK, computer operating systems do this:

Taken from here.

Do you know what genome do? They just sit in cells waiting on proteins to transcribe the information they contain to mRNA. The activities of proteins is more analogous to the activities of an OS.

And that’s something you should always keep in mind.

Nothing about specified information in DNA contradicts both men. You obviously feel otherwise, so explain the contradiction?

Are you sure?

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2019.0073

They had two “desired results”, one was achieved (boldened part), the other wasn’t (part not boldened). All of these happened “unguided”.

The microfluidic chips were used to simulate prebiotic conditions that were most likely present in alkaline hydrothermal vents. They didn’t achieve the second desired result (which was the reduction of CO2 to organics associated with extant biochemistry), mostly likely because the experiment was done under atmospheric pressure which contrasts with the higher pressure operating on alkaline hydrothermal vents.

No they don’t. All experiments involve certain degrees from an experimenter ranging from minimal to heavily influenced. When tumorigenesis studies are done on cells in the lab, researchers don’t sit there with those cells waiting for tumorigenic mutations to occur. They induce this mutations allowing for the quick development of tumors (in a few weeks or months), which violates (more or less) how tumors form in people under real life settings (tumors take years to develop and become cancerous). Regardless, we learn a great deal about the natural etiology of tumorigenesis from these “forced” experiments and no argues that a nefarious being instigates tumorigenesis in people because of the interference of the “finite” experimenter in those studies. Of course, heavy interference with an experimental system could limit the applicability of its findings.

I don’t see how those experimental outcomes would lead to the conclusions you speak of. Its like saying because all known studies on tumorigenesis under different conditions in laboratories involve the interference of experimenters, therefore a personal, transcendent being must be the cause of cancers in biology.

Any experiment on the OoL will require a conscious agent, at the very least to recreate likely conditions that existed on a prebiotic earth making your hypothesis unfalsifiable. I think you meant to say that any experiment with the least interference possible should falsify your (problematic) hypothesis.

4 Likes

I made the claim based on what was done in this study:

Yan, K. K., Fanga, G., Bhardwaja, N., Alexandera, R.P., Gerstein, M. (2010) Comparing Genomes to Computer Operating Systems in Terms of the Topology and Evolution of Their Regulatory Control Networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, 9186–9191.

I, initially, made this inference based on the experiment done by Church and Kosuri (2012), which showed how the similarity between digital information in DNA and human language was more than just metaphorical but literal. For instance, they created a biotech version of an e-reader, with the highest storage capacity to date. This involved encoding an entire book (along with illustrations) in DNA. The book consisted of 53,246 words, 11 JPG images, and even a javascript program.

Yes, I agree

Because all experiments are performed by an experimenter, they must involve investigator intervention. However, there are experiments that must be viewed as an ineligible prebiotic simulation when certain aspects of observer interference are crucial to their success. In constructing a prebiotic simulation experiment, the investigator creates the setting; supplies the aqueous medium, the energy and, the chemicals; and establishes the boundary conditions (Thaxton 1984 p.99-110; Jekel 1985). This activity produces the overall background conditions for the experiment, and although it is vital to the success of the experiment, it is relatively legitimate because it simulates conceivable natural conditions. However, the intrusion of the researcher becomes critical in an illegitimate sense whenever laboratory conditions are not defensible by association to consistently credible features of natural processes and conditions. Thus, the illegitimate intervention of the investigator is directly comparable to the geochemical implausibility of the condition arising from the researcher’s experimental design and/or procedure, and the level of such intrusion would be the greatest when such plausibility is missing altogether (Thaxton 1984 p.99-110; Jekel 1985). With this in mind, it appears reasonable to propose that acceptable interference by the investigator would comprise constructing reasonable design features of the experiment, regulating the initial reaction mixture, starting the input of free energy to drive the reaction at the outset, and performing whatever minimal disturbance to the system is necessary to withdraw portions of the reaction products at various stages for analysis (Thaxton 1984 p.99-110; Jekel 1985). Thaxton et al. (1984) established these criteria for the amount of observer interference acceptable for attempts to prove that unguided material processes produced life:

Degree of investigator interference

  1. Selected chemicals, isolated from other soup ingredients

  2. Selected wavelengths of UV, heat, isolated from other energy sources

  3. Spark, shock waves, isolated from other energy sources

  4. Concentrated solutions where reactions depend on concentrated conditions (e.g., HCN polymerization)

  5. Traps

  6. Photosensitization

Threshold of illegitimate interference

  1. Concentrated solutions where law of mass action is validly extrapolated +

  2. “Synthesis in the Whole”: dilute solutions mixed together

As shown in the outline, the demarcation line between legitimate and illegitimate interference is between 2) and 3). Any situation higher than 3) (i.e. 2) and 1)) would be illegitimate because the experimenter is deviating from plausible prebiotic conditions, and there is no analogy between the techniques and reliably plausible prebiotic conditions (Thaxton 1984 p.99-110; Jekel 1985). These same criteria can also be applied to biological evolution experiments because the main difference between chemical evolution and biological evolution is that chemical evolution can produce new characteristics and abilities without depending on reproduction or a self-replicating molecule.

It seems like you just cited the article without reading beyond its title (and the title is somewhat misleading). Nowhere in that article did they liken the genome to a computer OS, they only stated that “the genome has often been called the operating system (OS) for a living organism” which is a highly inaccurate analogy used in popular circles. What they likened to a computer OS was the transcriptional regulatory network. See for yourself:

Yan et al

I recommend you actually read articles before you cite them. In addition, do well to provide actual links to your sources than plain citations, to save us the stress of finding them ourselves.

I read through the article you cited by Pigliucci and Boudry and nowhere did they deny DNA houses information that could be reasonably called digital. The article centered on the use of problematic metaphors in biology communication to students and the public. You are confused.

Good.

For a brief but relatively nuanced discussion on the extent of human intervention and prebiotic chemistry experiments see:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07219-5

2 Likes

Well first off, links are not reliable because they often lead to broken links and old deleted articles.

Secondly, it is not that I misinterpret their article but you misinterpret what I was trying to argue from that study. All I said was that genomes and computers were almost identical in terms how they operate, which was what they were arguing. But, I did not reference that study to suggest this comparison was literal.

No, I am afraid you are the one who is confused because it is the wrong article in which I was suggesting that the digital information in DNA was literally the same as human language.

This is the actually study:

Church, G. M., Gao, Y. & Kosuri, S. (2012). Next-generation digital information storage in DNA. Science 337, 6102.

“Literally”. That’s funny. Could you explain how human language is even “digital” in the first place?

3 Likes

Digital information is composed of abstract entities involving discrete mathematics or statements of logic that apply to and exist by necessity. It involves language that humans use to communicate with each other every day, such as phrases, signs, and symbols that are meaningful and personal. Analog information refers to continuous or redundant but orderly complex patterns of information reflected within the laws of nature. DNA possesses these types of information processes where the nucleotide sequence both specifies the digital information of the gene and the higher order architectures of the genome, which have an impact on the expression of the digital information found in the gene.

More importantly, our conscious agency seems to be reflected within both the digital and analog information present in DNA. For example, the genome is virtually identical to computer operating systems (Yan et al. 2010), and the genetic information in DNA is mathematically identical to that in human language (Yockey 1981). Of course, some scientists insist that these comparisons between DNA information and human information are merely used in a metaphorical sense (Pigliucci & Boudry 2011). This contradicts the work done by biotechnologists who store specified information within the nucleotide sequences of DNA or RNA. For instance, Church and Kosuri (2012) were able to create a biotech version of an e-reader, with the highest storage capacity to date.

However, this close relationship between digital and analog information does not necessarily mean that physico-chemical laws of nature produce digital information. This is because the forces of chemical necessity (analog information) produce redundant order or rule-generated repetition that reduces the capacity to convey specified information (Polanyi 1968). For instance, random mixtures of polymers or granite are examples of complex structures generated, but they are not specified. Crystals are typically understood as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules held together in a uniform way. However, neither crystals nor polymer mixtures qualify as living organisms because they do not possess both information forms simultaneously found in DNA, leading to “specified complexity” (Orgel 1973).

Crick (1958), who was one of the first to elucidate the information properties of the DNA molecule, explained this meaning of information in biological terms in 1958 as “the specification of the amino acid sequence in protein. … the precise determination of sequence, either of bases in the nucleic acid or of amino acid residues in the protein.” Shortly thereafter, leading molecular biologists defined biological information to incorporate this notion of specificity of function and complexity (Sakar 1996).

I aim to show how we can test whether or not a Universal common designer exists in biochemistry. Let me be clear, this is going to be about testing for the existence of a Universal common designer or an undiscovered law of nature to potentially explain the origin of digital information within the bounds of biochemistry . However, this is NOT about showing how the origin of life or advanced life emerged whether its our life or another. Finally, I wish to explicitly clarify that my hypothesis does not defend the intelligent design theory proposed by intelligent design theorists. In fact, intelligent design theorists do not actually pioneer or promote a theory of intelligent design that involves a transcendent agent because they do not believe it is a testable scientific model and they do not believe present experiments or observations can lead us to infer or conclude a transcendent agent.

That’s nonsense. Journal articles have “DOIs” which have many uses including serving as a means to access them on the Internet. All the articles you cited (and the ones you will cite) have DOIs. Next time, provide them to enable others easily access your sources.

This is horribly wrong. They never argued genomes are almost operationally identical to a computer OS and I cited the abstract of the article as evidence to that effect.

You are deeply confused and badly misinterpreted that paper.

There is no analogy between how a computer OS and genome works. Stop getting it twisted. Genomes simply serve as information archives in biological systems, a far cry from the functions of a computer OS.

It appears you suffer from amnesia. In an earlier post of yours, you claimed the findings in the Church and Kosuri (2012) contradicted a supposed claim of Pigliucci and Boudry (2011). This is what you wrote:

I read that Pigliucci and Boudry article and none of its contents clashed with anything in the Church and Kosuri article. This indicates you most likely don’t read the articles you cite, but blindly copy them from your favorite ID sites and paste them here.

Notice how his response ignores your question, and is a verbatim repeat of his earlier comment. He doesn’t understand many of the things he writes and has to fall back to his ID sources even if what they say is irrelevant to particular questions like yours.

4 Likes

Is it really? Why are you convinced of this? TBH, I’m not sure what you wrote there actually means anything.

2 Likes

The article you quoted from specifically said:

“we present a comparison between the transcriptional regulatory network of a well-studied bacterium (Escherichia coli) and the call graph of a canonical OS (Linux) in terms of topology and evolution. We show that both networks have a fundamentally hierarchical layout, but there is a key difference:”

You even acknowledged this: What they likened to a computer OS was the transcriptional regulatory network.

Guess what, THIS WAS MY POINT.

From the study:

“A computer OS is described by a regulatory control network termed the call graph, which is analogous to the transcriptional regulatory network in a cell .”

Oh, this is my mistake then. I misunderstood the objection you were making. Just to clarify, I was not suggesting that Pigliucci and Boudry’s article was denying DNA houses digital information but that they were arguing how the comparison between digital information in DNA and the digital information that comes from minds was used in a metaphorical sense. You even suggested this yourself:

“The article centered on the use of problematic metaphors in biology communication to students and the public.”

I looked at your source, which was great by the way, but I am trying to figure out what you disagree with in regards to my actual proposal here rather than the stuff I said in my introduction, which is not the overall point of emphasis on this topic.

I made the changes accordingly here:

A Comprehensive Theory of Intelligent Design - Peaceful Science

1 Like

Here is why I am convinced:

The genetic information in DNA is mathematically identical to that in human language (Yockey 1981).

More importantly, Church and Kosuri (2012) created a biotech version of an e-reader, with the highest storage capacity to date. This involved encoding an entire book (along with illustrations) in DNA. The book consisted of 53,246 words, 11 JPG images, and even a javascript program.

You indeed have amnesia, because that was never your point. How can you forget your own words for crying out loud:

Read your own words carefully. You used the Yan paper to support the contention that the “genome is virtually identical to computer operating systems”. I looked up the paper and no such claim was made or defended there.

This leads me to the conclusion that you conflated the genome with a transcriptional regulatory network (TRN) leading you to misinterpret the Yan paper. A genome is not the same thing as a TRN, rather it is part of it. I’d recommend you get a grip on the basic biology here before you attempt to engage with the experts, to prevent you from fooling yourself.

Your ignorance of the distinction between a TRN and genome reflects here again. If your reply to this comment doesn’t show you have acknowledged your mistake and updated yourself on it, don’t bother expecting my reply because I simply don’t have the strength to correct you over and over again.

Seeing that you can admit to your mistakes, I hope you will do same with the mistake in your previous comments I pointed out.

That means you misrepresented that paper, making the authors say what they didn’t and are still misrepresenting them because nowhere in that paper do we even find the phrase “digital information” with respect to DNA or humans. You are just making things up.

No biologist denies DNA contains information that could be described as digital in some sense (which is why you attacking a strawman claim that Pigliucci and Boudry never made). In computers, specific arrangements of 1’s and 0’s are used to represent some type of information: 1100 could mean letter “A” or number “2”. In DNA we see something similar, where triplet arrangements of nucleotides (codons) specify particular amino acids: AAU codes for leucine, UUU codes for lysine. That’s as far as the analogy between DNA “digital” information and human digital information goes.

Some good articles to read on the uses and limits of DNA metaphors in biology:

For metaphors in general:

Learn not to push analogies too far.

You said:

I replied, correcting you that every OoL experiment must involve conscious agency, in the form of an experimenter, to some extent. You agreed to that, so we are good.

4 Likes